AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“This is Montana, Mom, not the jungles of the Amazon. I’ll be fine. Promise. There are good hospitals here. And my health has been good for years.”
Levi shook his head. He shouldn’t be eavesdropping, especially not on conversations involving hospitals. Resolving to return to his decision that he wasn’t interested in short women, he gripped the pull cord and yanked until the ancient motor turned over, drowning out the conversation next door.
* * *
THE PROBLEM, LEVI THOUGHT, as he slipped a Pardo and Saupp Construction T-shirt over his head while looking out the window at the house next door, was that his new neighbor was always outside. It was hard to ignore a woman who seemed to think every beverage should be drunk on her front porch.
This evening, as she had for the past two weeks, she sat in the rocking chair with her feet up on the railing and a coffee cup in hand. The hems of her loose cotton shorts gapped. If he were at a different angle, he could follow the line of her skin down to her panties. She had nice legs. Not overly long, but shapely. He had no interest in women with thin legs.
She set her cup down and stretched her hands over her head. Her shirt lifted, and a little line of skin appeared between the elastic waistband of her plaid shorts and the bottom of her T-shirt. It was the type of movement he imagined her doing first thing in the morning, as she swung her legs over the side of the bed and welcomed the day. Intimate. Personal.
And he was staring out his window at her like a creep.
Levi jerked at the hem of his shirt, as if the movement could do anything to erase the image of his young neighbor with hair mussed by a long day. Not that that particular mental image was so bad, but he also imagined his hand slipping under the back of her shirt, her skin warm and soft on his cool palm and a glimpse of her face as she looked over her shoulder and smiled at him.
He reached up and closed the blinds.
He had to pick up his niece for soccer practice. Since he’d taken over coaching her youth soccer team two years ago, watching those girls tear up the field, fight, celebrate, fail and succeed had become the highlight of his fall. Solstice, his niece, seemed to have grown another three inches over the summer and would be all limbs. Helping her figure out how to manage all the new length in her arms and legs was a challenge he looked forward to.
* * *
THE NEXT FRIDAY, Levi climbed into his truck and looked next door with resignation. If he didn’t want to watch his neighbor move about his life, he had to learn to ignore her better. That and keep his kitchen blinds closed. Actually, all the blinds on this side of the house. Today she had come home from work, disappeared only long enough to change into shorts and grab a glass of what looked like iced tea. Now the ice in her tea was melting as it sat in the sun on her front porch while she was elbow deep in soil, shoving mums into the dirt. When she leaned forward, she stretched like a cat, her back long and her ass high in the air.
God, he definitely had to learn how not to watch her, because he didn’t want to shutter his entire house. He liked the sunlight coming in through the windows, especially the afternoon summer sun. The big, south-facing windows were one of the reasons he’d bought this house.
He shoved the gearshift into Reverse, looked over his shoulder with barely a glance at his neighbor’s ass, backed out of the driveway and sped down the street.
* * *
“YOU’RE LATE,” DENNIS SAID, lifting up his eyebrow and his phone at the same time. Both pointed comments on the time.
“Barely.” Levi slid into the booth and motioned to Mary for a beer. The two of them had been coming to O’Reilly’s and sitting in this booth every Friday night for three years. The first six months, she’d come over to ask what beer he wanted. He’d said “whatever” enough times that she brought over whatever she or Brian, the bar’s owner, felt like bringing to him. Sometimes he drank the entire beer and sometimes only a sip or two.
A little adventure, in his otherwise boring life.
A safer adventure than watching his neighbor.
Dennis coughed, a bad one that collapsed his shoulders in on his ears and shook the table. The kind of cough that would have his sister rushing to her husband to see what was wrong and Dennis struggling to both catch his breath and shake off Brook.
